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Oral History Interview with Floyd B. McKissick Sr., December 6, 1973. Interview A-0134. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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WALTER DEVRIES:

Did the biggest gains occur in the last ten years, say, compared to the
fifteen years before that? Are is there any way to
mark it off in terms of periods?

FLOYD MCKISSICK:

I think that most black people automatically distinguish, even by
organizations, I think we start in 1960…the 1954 Supreme
Court decision, I say you follow those suits, the pattern of those suits
and how they were brought…and then you come to the second
Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of
Education and then you've got to take into concern the
freedom rides that occurred in the forties. Then, you've got
to take into consideration the sit-in movements of the sixties, which in
my mind, was the real force in American society to really change
American society. The demonstrations which went to bring about a
substantial change in North Carolina in the line of public
accomendations and moving up. So, I think that you could divide that
movement on the basis of…I think if I were to divide it
generally now, I'd divide it as the legal movement as one, in
which you sought to get your rights and this legal movement bogged down.
Then you had the protest movements that moved it forward.

WALTER DEVRIES:

Beginning with the sit-ins?

FLOYD MCKISSICK:

Well, I don't say beginning with the sit-ins, because you had
the freedom riders prior to the sit-ins. You had two sets of freedom
riders. The first one I was part of, I think, and another guy at
Asheville by the name of Joe Feldman [unclear]
I think, was part of it, Rustin, [unclear]
Jim Houser, on the original freedom rides that happened about
'46 or '47. These were the original freedom rides
and that's where kids, when that bus came down, got beaten,
And Chapel Hill, Jim Peck was the white guy that got
beaten at the bus station in Chapel Hill. That was the first freedom
ride and of course that took about that much item in the newspaper at
that time. The climate wasn't ready to see blacks take that
kind of step. I think the outward climate had moved and attitudes had
changed to recognize that the freedom rides would make a front page item
later.

JACK BASS:

You were a major participant in the Meridith march, what followed after
James Meridith got shot in the continuing march in Mississippi.

FLOYD MCKISSICK:

Yeah. I led that, I organized that march. We issued the call to bring all
the organizations together to continue the march at the spot where he
fell.